Tepco to be nationalised for 10 years

* Govt body expected to inject 1 trln yen in Tepco -Kyodo * Tepco expected to move into black in 2013 business year-Kyodo * Utility may be forced to let outside directors run firm-Kyodo TOKYO, Jan 21 (Reuters) – Tokyo Electric Power Co will in effect be nationalised for at least 10 years and is […]

U.S. Direct Fossil Fuel Subsidies are Half a Trillion Dollars Annual

In an exemplary feat of public service, Worldwatch Institute founder Lester Brown, now with his Earth Policy Institute, has exposed the huge, ongoing financial subsidies to fossil fuels industries. Governments’ and corporations’ persisting with this policy — legal corruption of the worst order at a time of out-of-control climate change — is nothing short of […]

$1 Billion More Pumping Into U.S. Wind

Dire predictions abound for U.S. wind power development if a federal production tax credit dies as scheduled at the end of this year, but projects already in the works appear to retain solid investment appeal. Sempra Energy sure seems to think so. The sprawling California energy company said it is jumping in with BP on […]

Confronting Overpopulation in China

  The world’s population has reached seven billion on October 31, 2011, according to the “2010 Revision of the World Population Prospects”.  As the country with the biggest population in the world, according to the China population clock, China has 1,319,175,365 citizens, which means that in every five people in the world, one is Chinese.  […]

The natural gas glut is reshaping electricity markets

Over at Bloomberg, Julie Johnsson and Mark Chediak document how low natural gas prices are reshaping electricity markets. Wind, nuclear, and coal all look expensive compared to natural gas generation: With abundant new supplies of gas making it the cheapest option for new power generation, the largest U.S. wind-energy producer, NextEra Energy Inc. (NEE), has shelved […]

Libya oil output back to pre-war levels

Italian group Eni’s oil output in Libya is almost back to its pre-conflict levels at 260,000 barrels per day, Chief Executive Paolo Scaroni said on Saturday. “Output has now gone back to its pre-war levels. It was 270,000 bpd (before the war), now it’s 260,000 bpd,” Scaroni told journalists in Tripoli. Scaroni also said Eni […]

Hormuz row between US, Iran heading for ultimate round

Consumers are on edge! As the Washington — Tehran theatre gets readied — for the ultimate round, with both using oil as a weapon, a beeline of worried visitors to Riyadh makes an interesting reading. Iran’s traditional crude customers are desperate, seeking guarantees of stepping in — from other major suppliers — in case required. […]

US Oil Use Down 1.2% in 2011

U.S. oil demand fell 1.2 percent to 18.9 million barrels a day last year, trade group American Petroleum Institute said Friday. Early data from the federal Energy Information Administration issued Jan. 10 showed a 1.6 percent, or 310,000 barrels a day, drop to 18.87 million barrels a day. The International Energy Agency, the oil-market watchdog […]

Australian Peaky Leaks goes mainstream

The Australian Daily Telegraph published today a story on a leaked government report (BITRE 117) which (optimistically) calculated peak oil around 2017, followed by permanent decline The report can be downloaded here: http://ianmcpherson.com/blog/audio/Australian_Govt_Oil_supply_trends.pdf Thanks to the watchful eye of ASPO Australia: The all important graphs are extracted here: The global peak North America Eurasia East […]

Why this is an amazing time to be alive

Visioning the future we wish to create. Photo: h.koppdelayney via Flickr. This is an amazing time to be alive! “Yeah, right,” my inner cynic says, “crumbling economy, peak oil, peak everything, melting ice caps, mass extinctions…” The list goes on and on, all woven together, I remind my cynic within, by the fact that we’re […]

U.S. Only Buying 10% of Oil From Middle East

Shraga Biran, founder of Alon Group and author of “Opportunism: How to Change the World One Idea at a Time,” and Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies & Co., talk about U.S. energy dependence and oil imports from the Middle East. They speak with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television’s “Taking Stock.” Bloomberg

The Green Economy, Boon or Menace?

The development of the green economy is the subject of pitched debate among specialists. While some believe it will deepen social inequalities and increase corporate control over natural and biological resources, others highlight its potential role in protecting the environment and creating employment. “The green economy does not challenge current systems of production, such as […]

Canada Pledges to Sell Oil to China After Obama Rejects Keystone Pipeline

President Barack Obama’s decision yesterday to reject a permit for TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline may prompt Canada to turn to China for oil exports. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in a telephone call yesterday, told Obama “Canada will continue to work to diversify its energy exports,” according to details provided by Harper’s office. Canadian […]

Where do continued high oil prices lead us?

We know high oil prices have an adverse impact on the economy, often leading to recession. According to Economist James Hamilton, 10 out of 11 of US recessions since World War II have been associated with oil price spikes. But where do continuing high oil prices lead us? How will economic contraction “play out,” if […]

Population planning made more socially acceptable

Pakistan is the sixth largest country in the world as regards population and the world’s seventh nuclear power, but when it comes to the human development index (HDI), we are at 145 out of a total of 193 countries of the world, which is something that must set us thinking. These views were expressed by […]

McKinsey: Resource revolution

The English thinker Thomas Malthus argued in his famous essay1 on the principle of population that there was no longer sufficient land to feed the world’s rapidly growing population, threatening poverty and famine. But an agro-industrial revolution soon transformed the economies of Europe and North America, and his fears proved unfounded. More recently, conventional wisdom […]

Don’t Frack Me Up

To many walking the planet, fracking has a seriously bad reputation. Thanks to hyperbole and misinformation, fracking opponents have convinced a lot of people that the operators who drill and then hydraulically fracture underground rock layers thumb their noses at and even hate the environment. Anti-fracking claims may be twists on reality – for example, […]

Study Finds that Childhood Leukemia Rates Double Near Nuclear Power Stations

In a report certain to cause fear and loathing in the global nuclear industry, an eminent French research institute published a study in the International Journal of Cancer, which notes increased rates of leukemia in children living close to French nuclear power plants (NPPs.)How much greater?The study by the Institut National de la Sante et […]

Why Iran’s President Wants to Bully the Oil World

… And Why It Really May Not Matter All That Much Anyway Like a powder keg with gasoline too nearby, Big Guns pile up in and around the Persian Gulf as Iran’s current head of state, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, keeps making warlike noises about blocking the vitally important Strait of Hormuz – through which about […]

Where Will Exxon Mobil Be In 2040?

Exxon Mobil (XOM) is one of the world’s biggest oil producers. The company operates 37 refineries in 21 countries and it keeps investing for more. Everyone in the investment world knows about Exxon and the company is one of the all time favorites as far as fund managers go. On the other hand, one can’t […]

Keeping Reality In Mind

Ten months ago, I offered this observation: This is the reality: we’re NOT running out of oil, and we won’t for several more decades. But that is not the point and never is when discussing peak oil. Peak oil is about the rate of production, the quality of oil, the ease of access, refinement, availability, […]

EIA analysis: big drop in imports leads to big drop in inventories

Markets today don’t seem to be reacting significantly to a sharp decline in US crude imports and a resultant drop in crude inventories. You can read Platts analysis of the Energy Information Administration weekly statistics here.

$4-a-gallon gas likely this spring

Get ready to pay $4 or more at the pump this spring: Analysts say gas prices could hit a record high. Fred Rozell, retail pricing director at Oil Price Information Service, says he expects the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline to reach $4 to $4.25 per gallon for regular gasoline when […]

Town prepares for peak oil

A small but determined Woodstock group is attempting to change the way their community thinks about and uses energy. It’s called Transition Town Woodstock, a push to slowly reduce the community’s dependence on fossil fuels and to prepare for rising oil prices, group member Keith Helmuth says. “The idea is to do what we can […]

Security by Design

It is commonly assumed that our national security depends only on our capacity to project military power beyond our borders and has little to do with how we organize the internal business of the country. The nation’s armed strength and its “soft power” are necessary components of security, but they are not—and cannot be—the whole […]

ERoEI, desert solar, oil replacements, realistic renewables and tropical islands

Late last year, Tom Blees, I and a few other people from the International Award Committee of the Global Energy Prize answered reader’s energy questions on The Guardian’s Facebook page. The questions and answers were reproduced on BNC here. Now we’re  at it again, this time for the website Eco-Business.com (tagline: Asia Pacific’s sustainable business community). My section […]

IEA cuts 2012 global oil demand growth forecast

The International Energy Agency said on Wednesday that it expects global oil demand to grow by 1.1 million barrels a day in 2012, which is lower than its previous estimate of 1.3 million barrels a day. “Clear signs of economic weakness tipped global oil demand into a declining year-on-year trend at the end of 2011, […]

The Significance of the Al-Naimi Price Comment

Recently, Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi made some interesting comments to CNN about Saudi spare capacity: I believe we can easily get up to 11.4, 11.8 (million barrels a day) almost immediately, in a few days, because all we need is to turn valves,” Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told CNN’s John Defterios. “Now to […]

Error margins: forecasting energy demand

Long-term energy demand forecasts have always been as much art as science. They involve so many elements and can encompass such a wide array of approaches that any prediction can only be taken as a general guide as to what might — rather than what will — happen. As Danish physicist Niels Bohr said: “Prediction […]

Keystone oil sands pipeline rejected

The Obama administration rejected a bid to expand the controversial Keystone oil sands pipeline Wednesday, saying the deadline imposed by Congress did not leave sufficient time to conduct the necessary review. “The rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially the health and safety of […]

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